There are eight Sabbats and eight colours of magic (in the system devised by Pete Carroll) and so (as someone steeped in both the Wiccan Paganism and chaotic/eclectic occultism) it makes sense to me to explore how these systems can relate to each other. Of course the esoteric cake can be cut any number of ways and so this is simply my (current) serving suggestion. A Brother of mine in Germany has been working on similar lines and has come up with some slightly different ideas, and that’s all good. There is an immediate difference between these models in that the eight rays of the chaosphere are simply indicative of the many, many arrows which rush out from the singularity of Kia. (I could begin to discuss the great mystery of the ‘other colours’; of the ☀☀☀☀, ☀☀☀☀☀ & ☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀☀ rays…but then I’d have to kill you 😉 [Censored! Classified information… NW]
But if we stick to the 8=fold symbolism for now…
We start with the ‘conventional’ colours of magick as given by Pete in Liber Kaos:
The Eight Colours of Magic
I asked Pete recently why he chose the locations for the colours as given in his diagram above. Of course these energies/colours/styles are in opposing (or perhaps ‘complementary’ pairs). However the diagram doesn’t fit with either the Qabalistic system (if you overlay the chaosphere on Isaac Luria’s ten-balls-and-twenty-two-sticks model of the Tree it doesn’t match up). Neither is there any obvious astrological relationship (like the order of the planets as given on the heptagram shown in Crowley’s Book of Thoth). Mr Carroll told me that the order was ‘essentially arbitrary’ and therefore by changing the position of the colours (while maintaining the complementary pairs) I wouldn’t be ‘committing any great heresy’ (phew!)
So my proposal is that the order of colours as given by Pete Carroll can be re-arranged to give a neat fit between the core symbolism of each Pagan sabbat and each colour of magick. I’ve only been using this model for a few months, but by working with love (the type of love that allows a mother to nourish her baby with milk) at Imbolc, and the more cerebral vibe of opening out my ability to communicate at the most recent equinox, it seems to be working out for me.
The symbolic links between the directions and colours are:
Yule – Octarine, the Sun at Midnight, the paradox and play of festival, the birth of the God Son.
Imbolc – Green, love and sacrifice, parenthood, the promise of Spring.
Spring Equinox – Orange, the incoming power of the year, East.
Beltane – Purple, sex.
Midsummer – Yellow, the self, the waking consciousness.
Lammas – Red, agriculture, war, John Barleycorn must die.
Autumn Equinox – Blue, wealth, reflecting on what we have gathered in the year.
Samhain – Black, death.
The Wheel of Chaos
This type of re-configuration is, of course, one of the delights of modern magickal culture. We can create blends that suit our own spiritual tastes. Rather than going from system to system, abandoning one psychic structure to invest in a nice new shiny one, we can also manufacture hybrids. The alchemy of birthing such ceremonial chimera helps to keep our styles of magick strong and vigorous. And as a dedicated chaos magician and witch I’d rather be a robust mongrel than a sickly pedigree!
JV
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